Traditional day trading is a trap setup by brokerage to take your money, very few traders win in the long run. The only winners are brokers and prop firms. Learn to trade and invest properly is the only way. There is no short cut.
There are restrictions in place but poorly designed or easy way to get around when opening a trading account. Regardless, like I said...requiring exams to be passed won't fly over with brokers that are dependent upon that revolving door of traders. I remember after the Atlanta shootings involving a trader from a prop firm...a Senator suggested such type of tests and someone estimated it will severely cripple most brokerage that cater to retail traders. It was just a suggestion and I don't think that Senator was going to pursue it at the time when the statement was made. Nothing happened from it but it was something I strongly agreed with. Money talks and such would be something the brokerage lobbyists would have been willing to battle although I'm not sure today if such is the same with the retail trading industry itself changing and the industry has put subtle (band-aid like) restrictions on the retail customers. For example, it was a wild wild west in the 90's with all those brokerage commercials on TV until they became more proficient in the nature of the internet so that they were no longer dependent upon TV commercial advertisement. Thus, the brokerage industry is now targeting specific group of potential clients in comparison to the wide net they used in the 90's. More recently, I heard a few years back another Senator stating that raising capital requirements as a standard with all brokerage as a restriction...essentially making retail trading only suitable for the upper class instead of these crazy 2k - 5k initial account requirements, cheap leverage like $400 - $500 per contract...feeding the illusion someone can get rich with a very small trading account that some say is the dumb money. Yet, like all things...something big happens in the market to make new changes. I've seen recent articles about the "influx" of traders from traditional markets into other markets that are not as regulated and much easier to get involved. If such is true...that in itself will eventually imply there's a lot less dumb money (as you called it) in traditional markets like the stock market.
When I applied for the permission to trade options, I realized those restrictions were actually to protect the brokerage firms and their risk than me. I could easily get permission to trade naked options once I stated my knowledge was "good".
I think there is way too many restrictions in business, pretty soon you be wanting restrictions on opening any type of business that doesn't have anything to do with life, food and water. Maybe you want restrictions on artists, they need to take a test on painting ocean scenes, like where does it all end? You come to marketplace and ill prepared, you lose and I hope they put next accounts on debt and on and on, surprisingly that is exactly how I did it, you want something bad enough, you figure ways to get better. Like you going to hold their hand for next three years, or how about trading tax rebates, first ten grand you get entire amount back? Took my long flipping time to get good, and like traders before me, we need more losers to come trade. How bout studying more and figuring out what the HFTs are doing and coat tailing them, everyone up in arms bout HFTs, how about learning charting instead of new great indicators, you watch indicators long enough in relationship to price, you know what most will be doing.
If it wasn't for that millions of people all over the world wouldn't be losing mostly a small sum each month avg $100 per month, then the banks could only take cash from each other and the entire system would fail. Good thing?
Neither Day trading nor stock market investing is a zero sum game. In stock market investing, in any given time period, it is possible for all investors to make money or to lose money. Actually over the the long term most investors make money. As for Day trading your own quotes and article references contradict you. First, if 1/2 of the 1,386 day traders were profitable and made $9.5 million, and the other 1/2 were unprofitable and lost $4.6 million, how is that a zero sum game? Second, if day traders only trade against one another, that would be a negative sum game, since you have to factor in commissions and the bid/ask spreads.
Day trading is a massive negative sum game. It is not close to zero sum. Commissions/fees, slippage and expenses take large amounts out of the game. As far as competition, of course you are competing against technology and pros with faster execution, better skills and knowledge of the game you do not have. Nothing close to 40 percent of daily volume comes from what you would consider a day trader. A large portion does come from programs and algos. There is no way to always not trade against market makers/specialists. However, some situations do attract more "public" money than others. That is not to say someone can or cannot beat this game. However, I doubt you will.
Really? That is a very discouraging statement to say to a small mom and pop trader. But truth is often very painful. Best wishes to you.